About the desk · Who is doing this
This page exists so you can decide whether to trust the files. Read it, then check any figure in any dossier against the method it describes.
The story, in writing
I'm Marko D Luna. I have run digital agencies for the better part of a decade, for more than a thousand brick-and-mortar businesses by my own count, in almost every local niche in the United States: building sites, running campaigns, reading the monthly reports agencies send their clients. And I kept seeing the same thing: the report and the invoice come from the same desk, and the client has no way to check the report. When the people grading the work are the people selling it, and the grade cannot be recomputed by anyone else, the grade is an ad. Small businesses, a chiropractor, an optometrist, a dispensary owner, have no practical way to check whether the visibility they pay for every month actually exists on the map their customers use.
The strange part is that checking is possible. A business's map ranking is not a secret; it is sitting in public, at every street corner, for anyone who scans it. A website's speed is measurable by anyone with the URL. Whether a "custom" site is one of six hundred copies of the same template is visible in the page source. None of this requires inside access. It requires instruments, patience, and no financial reason to look away.
So that became the desk. I measure an agency's entire client book, every client I can find, not a sample, not the three success stories on the agency's homepage, with the same instruments applied the same way to every business. Then I publish the whole thing: the method, the counts, and every figure, in a public dossier. An agency that passes is not put on the site. An agency that fails is published in full, every client. The bar is printed with the files, and so far 0 of 3 books have cleared it. And yes, I compete with the agencies in these files. That is exactly why I could afford to measure every one of their 1,644 clients instead of writing an opinion. The difference between this desk and a competitor's hit piece is that you can check any number in it.
I own marketing agencies, and I built a software stack that runs marketing for businesses like the ones in these files. I am a competitor of the agencies measured here, not of the businesses inside their books, and I want those businesses to see what they are actually getting. Read the files knowing exactly that. It changes nothing about the numbers: I hold no stake in any agency named here, no agency has ever paid this desk, and no agency can pay to be excluded, softened, or included. A file that can be bought is worthless, so the files are not for sale, in either direction. What comes after the file is made in the open too: if you read your listing and want it fixed, the free audit, a second opinion, is one click away: 15 minutes to walk the data we have on your business until it is fully understood, or a full hour, with a deeper audit prepared before the call and shown in full, plus guidance on finding a company that will actually support you, whether that is us or not. There is no pitch unless the fit is real, and if it is, you hear it on that call; service and pricing only ever come up on an appointment, and only if we want to work together. The receipts are free either way.
Take a breath. A dossier naming your agency is not a claim that your business is failing; it is a measurement of what your agency delivered across its whole book, with your listing as one data point in it. You are the injured party in these files, not the accused. Your own numbers, your map, your rankings, your speed test, are in the file right now: find your listing and read them at no cost. And understand what they mean: the readings stand as measured on the dates in the file, and a re-measurement will show whatever has changed since. When you are ready to talk about that, book the free audit. The file stays the same either way; nothing you do or don't buy can touch a published number.
The record behind the desk
You are reading a competitor's audit, so weigh the competitor. The operation doing the measuring runs marketing agencies of its own, and the software stack those agencies run on, in the same markets as the agencies in these files.
Why publishing this is fair
The line this desk holds: an agency's delivered results are legitimate public interest, because they were always sitting in public view. The private information of the businesses involved is not, and never appears.
That asymmetry is deliberate. Agencies market themselves on their clients' results, results which exist in public, on public maps and public websites. Reading those results back to the public, carefully and completely, is fair comment on work that was always on display. The businesses inside each book get the opposite treatment: their data is shown to them, privately and freely, and their contact information is never published, sold, or shared.
Method · Chain of custody
Every client an agency serves: assembled from showcase pages, template fingerprints, and the code agencies leave in page source. The whole book, not the highlight reel.
For every business, its main phrase is searched from a grid of real spots around its address, the way customers on phones do, and where Google put it is written down each time. 240,064 searches recorded so far.
The same tests on every site: how long it takes to show on a phone, whether it is a copy of a shared design, and whether the basics Google needs are filled in. Instrument readings, not opinions; the tools are public and free.
Every book is measured to the last client. A book that fails lands in a public dossier, every client in it, every figure recomputable from the steps above. A book that passes is not put on the site. Errors, when found, are corrected on the record with a note saying what changed.
If any figure in any file is wrong, the desk wants to know more than anyone. Dispute a figure through the dispute page with the listing it concerns; it is re-measured with the same instruments within 5 business days of the dispute arriving, and if the file was wrong, the file changes: publicly, with a dated correction note published within 2 business days of the re-measurement, not a silent edit. A desk that buries its mistakes fails the same test it applies to everyone else.
Talk to the desk
For their clients
If your provider is named in a file, your business was measured. Your map, your rankings, your speed test: free to read. The offer that follows is made in the open.
Find your listingBook a free auditFor the agencies
Every figure in every file is checkable and the method sheet is public.
Challenge a figureIndependent of every agency it measures: this desk is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or compensated by any agency named in these files, and nobody named in a file can pay to change one. It is operated by a competitor. The desk's owner runs competing marketing agencies and the software stack they run on, and the free audit is open to any business that reads its file and wants it fixed. A marketing-analysis publication; no legal proceeding exists or is implied. The businesses named in each file are the injured party, not the accused.